Mrs. Barbauld Biography

British author Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825) was one of
just a handful of women writers of her era. Referred to as Mrs.
Barbauld in the literature of the time, the largely home-schooled
daughter of a schoolmaster came from a prominent liberal family and
moved in distinguished circles throughout her life.

Barbauld penned several lengthy poems as well as literary criticism and
political commentary, but may be best remembered for the early childhood
teaching materials she wrote at a time when she and her husband ran their
own school in Suffolk. Her 1778 title,
Lessons for Children
, and the subsequent
Hymns in Prose for Children
which appeared three years later, became ubiquitous titles on the
bookshelves of English schools and homes for decades to come.

Born Anna Laetitia Aikin on June 20, 1743, Barbauld spent her childhood
and early teen years in Kibworth-Harcourt, a village in the county of
Leicestershire in central England. Her mother was Jane Jennings Aikin, and
her father, John Aikin, was trained as a Presbyterian minister. He was
also an educator who became director of a school for boys in the village,
and thanks to this Barbauld received a rather solid education for a young
woman of her era, including instruction in Greek and Latin. She and her
brother, John, four years her junior, remained close throughout their
lives.

Raised in Intellectual Atmosphere

Reverend Aikin was a Dissenter, the name given to a loose-knit coalition
of ministers and teachers who objected to the strict rules imposed on
schools and their curricula. The laws and decrees, imposed by the British
monarchy and parliament, were designed to prevent a recurrence of the
religious strife that had torn England apart a century earlier during its
Restoration and civil war periods. In short, Dissenters, who formed their
own schools and even communities in some cases, opposed the king's
influence over the Church of England and its requisite religious education
course of the era. Several prominent schools came out of this movement,
and one of the best known among them was the Warrington Academy in the
Cheshire town of the same name.

Barbauld and her family moved to Warrington in 1758 when her father was
hired as a teacher at the Academy. She was 15 years old at the time, and
would not marry until she was nearly 30. The intervening years were spent
immersed in educational pursuits, which were largely self-directed because
women were barred from most institutions of higher education such as
Oxford and Cambridge universities, and would be until well into the
nineteenth century. As a young woman Barbauld also formed close ties with
several important Dissenting figures of the era, including Joseph
Priestley (1733–1804), a close family friend and chemist known as
the co-discoverer of oxygen.

Barbauld's family background led her into political movements of
the era. She and others of her generation were particularly enthused by
events on the Mediterranean isle of Corsica, considered the first
democratic republic of the Enlightenment Age; Corsica's brief
period of sovereignty pre-dated the sweeping reforms of the French
Revolution but was quashed by invading French forces in 1768. One of her
first poems, "Corsica: An Ode," was written a year later in
homage to the failed struggle. It appeared in her first volume of poetry,
simply titled
Poems
, which was published in 1773. The work was well-received—though
published woman poets were still a relative rarity at the time—and
helped establish Barbauld's literary reputation in London. She was
reportedly encouraged to write by her brother, who had enjoyed some
success with his own work; they collaborated on a joint effort,
Miscellaneous Pieces in Prose
, that appeared in August of 1773.

Founded School in Suffolk

On May 26, 1774, Barbauld wed Rochemont Barbauld, a former Warrington
Academy student who was by then a Dissenting minister. He was six years
her junior, and friends and family were uneasy about the match, because
the Barbauld family had a history of mental illness. The union produced no
children—they were childless by choice, fearing that the mental
illness might pass on to a new generation—but they did adopt one of
her brother's sons, Charles, and raised the boy as their own. In
the first few years of their marriage, Rochemont found a post as a
minister for a parish in Suffolk, while Barbauld continued her literary
career. In 1775
Devotional Pieces, Compiled from the Psalms and the Book of Job
appeared in print.

Barbauld and her husband soon founded their own academy in Suffolk, called
the Palgrave School. It proved so successful that she was invited to serve
as director of a new women's college planned by noted social
reformer Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800), but Barbauld did not
believe
that most women were suited for a rigorous education, despite her own
talents and abilities, and declined the offer. The Palgrave School thrived
until 1785, and it was during this period that Barbauld produced her most
important educational materials for the very young. The first was a
reading primer,
Lessons for Children
, which appeared in 1778. Its author "urges children to explore the
animal, vegetable, and mineral worlds around them," noted Mary Beth
Wolicky in an essay for the
Dictionary of Literary Biography
. "As Barbauld was already a respected author and poet when she
wrote these pedagogical tracts, her new approach helped to change the
direction of children's literature. The
Lessons
were read and alluded to by people of all religious affiliations
throughout the nineteenth century."

Barbauld also wrote
Hymns in Prose for Children
, a 1781 title that would likewise endure for several generations to come.
It was widely published in North America, too, and even in other
languages, and remained in print for more than a hundred years. Her
professional life shifted considerably, however, in the mid-1780s. When
her husband began to display symptoms of the dreaded mental illness, they
sold the Palgrave School, spent a year in France, and settled in London in
June of 1786. A year later, Rochemont took a position as pastor of the
Rosslyn Hill parish church in north London.

The focus of Barbauld's writings now shifted to political reform.
In 1790 she penned
An Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test
Acts
. Both of these laws had been in place for more than a century and were a
form of discrimination against the Dissenters, as well as Roman Catholics
in England. According to the Test Act of 1673, for example, public
servants were required to be professed members of the Church of England.
The Corporation Act, which dated back to 1661, required all elected
officials or members of corporations to utter the Oath of Supremacy to the
Church of England within one year of taking office. Like many Dissenters
and Enlightenment-educated liberals, Barbauld perceived both laws as
impositions on civil liberties and a threat to a free society.
"Your church is in no danger because we are of a different
church," she wrote in her
Address
about the Church of England's control, "but it will be in
great danger whenever it has within itself many who have thrown aside its
doctrines, or even, who do not embrace them in the simple and obvious
sense. All the power and policy of man cannot continue a system long after
its truth has ceased to be acknowledged, or an establishment long after
its has ceased to contribute to utility."

Barbauld's inflammatory words were published anonymously, but most
of her compatriots as well as her foes recognized the tract as her work.
In 1791 she issued
The Epistle to William Wilberforce
, a poem paying homage to Britain's leading abolitionist. Like many
of Wilberforce's supporters, she and her family boycotted sugar for
many years, because it was a product that was imported from British
colonies in the Caribbean where slave labor was used to harvest it. She
also spoke out against England's renewal of hostilities with France
in 1793, writing in
Sins of Government, Sins of the Nation
that "freedom is a good thing, but if a nation is not disposed to
accept of it, it is not to be presented to them on the point of a
bayonet."

Marriage Ended on Tragic Note

Barbauld continued to work with her brother on various projects. He edited
a periodical called
Monthly Magazine
for a number of years, and she was a regular contributor. They also
collaborated on
Evenings at Home; or, The Juvenile Budget Opened: Consisting of a
Variety of Miscellaneous Pieces for the Instruction and Amusement of
Young Persons
, which was published between 1792 and 1795 and sold extremely well at the
time; again, it remained a staple in most middle-class English households
for several generations. She also edited or wrote introductions and
critical essays for several other titles, including a volume of
correspondence from the British author Samuel Richardson
(1689–1761), one of the first important novelists in the English
language.

When John Aikin moved to Stoke Newington, a village outside of London at
the time but later incorporated into the borough of Hackney, she and her
husband followed him there in 1802. But Rochemont's condition
deteriorated, and he grew abusive towards his wife. In January of 1808, he
came after her with a knife in hand, and she fled through a window of
their house; they separated two months later. "Placed in care in
London, he appeared to be improving, but he bribed his attendant for
permission to walk alone outside and was discovered dead on November 11,
1808, in the New River," according to Wolicky, who added,
"Barbauld was deeply affected by his death and ceased writing for
several years."

Barbauld had already agreed, however, to a major project by then, and
completed it by the 1810 deadline: she had been invited to choose the
novels and write the prefaces for a 50-volume set called
British Novelists
from the publisher Rivington. In January of 1812, one of her most notable
poems appeared in print. Titled
Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
, it imagined what a visitor to London might come upon at a future date
should England fail to address its abundance of social ills. Her narrator
saw the city's most cherished landmark, St. Paul's
Cathedral, in ruins, and lamented, "England, the seat of arts, be
only known/By the gray ruin and the mouldering stone;/That Time may tear
the garland from her brow,/And Europe sit in dust, as Asia now."

The poem was condemned by many for its pessimistic view of
England's future, and was attacked in the press. Even a longtime
friend of her family, Robert Southey, was revealed to be the author of the
most scathing review, and Barbauld published no other works after it. She
died on March 9, 1825, in Stoke Newington. Her niece, Lucy Aikin
(1781–1864), wrote a memoir of her aunt, but interest in Barbauld
and her literary achievements faded considerably after her death. Feminist
literary historians in the latter half of the twentieth century
rediscovered her poetry and prose, and a long overdue scholarly analysis
of her significance to women's literary history began in the last
decades of the twentieth century.